Scandal of the organ hoards

By Celia Hall Nigel Bunyan and Sean O'Neill

12:00AM GMT 31 Jan 2001

THE scandal of how thousands of dead children at hospitals across England were dismembered and stripped of their internal organs without parental consent was disclosed in a series of reports yesterday.

In the course of an inquiry that centred initially on Bristol and Alder Hey in Liverpool, it was found that 104,300 organs, foetuses and body parts were in storage, the majority at 25 hospitals. But that number is thought to be a gross under-estimation because few hospitals kept accurate records and some did not provide figures.

Over the past two years at least 27 other hospitals incinerated an unknown number of stored organs as clinical waste after learning that an inquiry had started. In the past, parents signed post mortem examination consent forms without being told that organs and body parts could be removed and retained.

Alan Milburn, the Health Secretary, promised "urgent changes" to make informed parental consent the basis of the law governing post mortem examinations. He said he would implement in full the recommendations of the report by Prof Liam Donaldson, the Chief Medical Officer, who said that a fundamental shift in emphasis from retention to donation of organs was required in the NHS.

Prof Donaldson's report was published simultaneously with a report by Michael Redfern, QC, into the events at Alder Hey. There, Prof Dick van Velzen, its former pathologist, amassed a collection of 6,900 organs and body parts - the largest in the country.

Mr Milburn said that between 1988 and 1995 Prof van Velzen "systematically ordered the unethical and illegal stripping of every organ from every child who had a post mortem". The professor, now living in his native Netherlands, has been summoned to appear before the General Medical Council and faces possible criminal prosecution.

An emergency meeting will be held at the GMC on Friday to limit Prof van Velzen's registration pending a full hearing. The Redfern report accused him of stealing medical records, "extreme fabrication" of autopsy reports and carrying out full post mortem examinations against parents' wishes.

Although he was supposed to be using the organs to carry out research at Liverpool University into cot deaths, many samples lay untouched in a basement laboratory. Merseyside police are investigating his activities. A file, understood to relate to medical records accompanying a quantity of body parts found in Canada, has been sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions.

The Redfern report said: "There can be no doubt that Prof van Velzen failed parents and doctors at every level. Organs were retained so that parents unwittingly buried 'shells' of their children, causing immense distress when discovered. He should not be allowed to practise again in the United Kingdom or anywhere else."

Mr Milburn told the Commons that Prof van Velzen had lied to parents, doctors and hospital managers. He said: "These failures were compounded by the incompetence and insensitivity of both the hospital and university authorities once the truth did begin to emerge.

"The hospital seemed overwhelmed by events. The university simply turned its back on parents. Some parents faced up to four funerals as different organs were returned to them at different times. The pain caused by this dreadful sequence of events is unforgivable." When Paula O'Leary, whose son Andrew died at 11 months, was called to the offices of solicitors representing the hospital, she found 36 parts of his body laid out on a table. She had to take them away in a plastic carrier bag.

Last night Hilary Rowland, the chief executive of the Royal Liverpool Children's NHS Trust who has been on paid leave, was formally suspended with Jacqueline Waring, Alder Hey's chief laboratory scientific officer. Prof Michael Orme, who was dean of medicine at Liverpool University during the van Velzen years, had his secondment to the NHS Executive as North West director of training and education suspended.

The Redfern report also disclosed that the practice of organ and body part removal at Liverpool, where there were six collections of human remains, pre-dated Prof van Velzen's tenure. A collection of body parts and foetuses was discovered at the Institute of Child Health, based at Alder Hey.

The Redfern report said that the detail of the collection, including 13 children's heads and 22 heads from foetuses dating from the 1960s and 1970s, made "sobering reading". The report added: "Perhaps the most disturbing specimen is that of the head of a boy aged 11 years old."

Prof Donaldson's audit of body part collections in England found that 88 per cent of organ retentions occurred at 25 NHS trusts and medical schools. After Liverpool, the largest collections were at Oxford, Imperial College London, Great Ormond Street, London, and the Royal Brompton, London. He also concluded that 16,500 samples had been stored illegally because they had been removed in coroners' inquests and kept for longer than necessary to establish the cause of death.

Mr Milburn said he was establishing a commission to oversee the return of organs and body parts to families and would require all hospitals to provide advice and support to the bereaved. Most of the hospitals singled out for storing large numbers of organs issued statements yesterday apologising for the distress caused to parents.

Many said that new procedures had been introduced and some set up telephone hotlines for relatives wanting more information. Paying tribute to the parents of the children whose bodies were stripped at Alder Hey, Mr Milburn said: "They are incredibly decent people who have behaved with absolute integrity. I hope they can take some comfort from the changes we have recommended."

Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, has ordered a review of the coroners system, which was heavily criticised by the Redfern report. David Blunkett, the Education Secretary, will review the arrangements between universities and hospitals for employing staff on joint contracts.

Ian Bogle, the chairman of the British Medical Association, said he welcomed changes in the law to prevent a repeat of events at Alder Hey hospital. "I am deeply shocked that during the van Velzen years organs were removed from children in a systematic and underhand way and that, even worse, no real research was conducted on these organs, so there was no possible benefit to patient care."

Prof Philip Love, vice-chancellor of Liverpool University, said a major review of practices had been launched, but he sought to distance the university from Prof van Velzen's activities. He said: "The university would wish to emphasise that it had responsibility for overseeing and regulating his academic activities and not for his activities as a hospital pathologist, or as an agent of the coroner. The claimed management failings need to be read in this light."

Copies of the Redfern report will be sent to Canada, where the medical authorities are investigating Prof van Velzen, and to all EU countries.